Shale Drilling Could Accelerate Soon

Shale Drilling Could Accelerate Soon

WATFORD CITY, ND - JULY 28: North Dakota has been experiencing an oil boom in recent years, due ... [+] in part to new drilling techniques including hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. . (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) Much has been made of the fact that oil and gas prices have recovered to the point that U. S. shale is very profitable, and yet drilling has not picked up yet. The rigs active in the Marcellus and the Permian are still about half pre-pandemic levels. As the two primary sources of incremental gas and oil supply from U. S. shale, the direction of investment in those areas will be important in determining world oil and U. S. gas prices in the next year and beyond. Generally, the upstream sector has seen a significant decrease in investment after both the price drop in 2015 and the pandemic with its associated weak prices in 2020. This has caused serious concern about tight supplies in the medium-term future, rather as happened after the 1998 oil price collapse, which was partly responsible for the high prices in the 2000s. (The second Gulf War and Venezuelan political turmoil were also major factors.) Also, as Bloomberg's